The Moon I Never Held

Some nights the water forgets its own name

and becomes a mirror for the things we cannot reach—

the crescent moon, pale and certain,

floating just beneath the surface

like a secret the world is almost ready to tell.

━━━

I have stood at the edge of dark water

with my palm turned upward,

not in demand, not in desperation,

but the way a field opens before rain:

quietly, wholly, without condition.

━━━

The light came anyway.

Gold from the horizon where the sun had left its coat behind.

Green where the water remembered the land.

Blue where the sky pressed its weight

into the deep and asked nothing back.

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And the moon—

that thin white smile—

settled into the space

between my fingers and the surface,

as if asking:

━━━

What would you do, if you could hold the light?

━

I learned the answer before I could speak it:

you hold it open.

You let it spill.

You do not make a fist of grace.

━━━

Because the moon was never mine to keep.

It belongs to the tides,

to the fishermen who navigate by its silver thread,

to the mothers who count the nights like rosary beads,

to the traveler who looks up from any road

and finds himself suddenly less alone.

━━━

I am only the hand that says:

I see you.

I am grateful.

I was here.

━━━

And the water carries the rest—

that luminous, unholdable rest—

back to wherever light is born.